Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles,
I’d house all scholars poor and make them beam with smiles.
In wind and rain these mansions would stand like mountains high.
Alas! Should these houses appear before my eye,
Frozen in my unroofed cot, content I’d die.
-- the poem “My Thatched Hut was torn apart…
Chinese history
It started with a death in the river, the legend says. But no one could predict the scale of the repercussions - which are marked today, more than 22 centuries later, with international sports events. The original festival has deep mainland Chinese roots, but was popularized worldwide by the people of Hong Kong. The…
IN EARLY APRIL this year, I went on a trip to Wuhan in Hubei Province (湖北武漢). At the Hubei Provincial Museum, I found a long queue in front of a collection. Out of curiosity, I approached the attractive treasure, and found long tin-bronze sword in front of me. It was the “Sword of Goujian” (越王勾踐劍),…
CAN GUAN GONG boost your business, get you through your exams, turn you into a success story? Hundreds of millions of people in East Asia think so.
Shopkeepers have his statue on their counters. Business people have him in their high-tech offices. Restaurateurs have him in their dining halls. Hong Kong police believe he can…
Ambitious people worldwide from business folk to army generals make use of The Art of War, an ancient Chinese book written more than two millennia ago. Who was author Sun Tzu? Emily Zhou looks at the man behind the myth.
IT WAS ONE OF the most turbulent periods in Chinese history. Nearly every day, people…
IT WAS ARGUABLY the most mismatched war in history. The British invaded the Chinese state of Tibet in 1903, leading to the deaths of an estimated 2,700 Tibetans.
And just five British officers.
This extraordinary story has three main elements:
First, the presence of a western superpower, known for its unmatched weaponry, acting…
CHINESE EXPLORER ZHENG HE would sail from China with his boats laden with gifts. He took treasures from his country to give as presents or to use in trade with people he met around the world. He once came home with a giraffe.
On the way back to China, the ships would be too light…
Hong Kong became host to an extraordinary Communist school in the 1940s The British asked Communists to work as the police in the New Territories A Hong Kong war hero got an MBE before being killed by a Taiwanese bomb
ONE OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY episodes in modern history was a “bromance” between British colonial…
THE TEA TRADER had no tea leaves to buy or sell. But he didn’t mind. Young merchant Liao had far more serious matters on his mind.
In January of 1938, he'd opened a tea import-export business called the Yuehua Company (粵華公司) at 18, Queen’s Road in Victoria, the main city and central business district of…
The last Emperor of the Southern Song was a fleeing young royal family member who lived in the Hong Kong town of Mui Wo on Lantau island. He’s been long forgotten now, but the opening of a new metro station named after a monument to him and his brother has revived interest in his astounding…